Hopkinsville City Council Considers Expanded Sales in Alcohol Ordinance Amendment

The Hopkinsville City Council will hear the first reading tonight of an amendment that would cut the fifty-year-old restriction that alcohol sales only be sold in the downtown area.

The move would essentially eliminate the four-by-fourteen-block boundary in which the sale of alcohol has been limited to since the mid-1960s.

Hopkinsville Chief Financial Officer Robert Martin says the Council initially sought to allow non-profit organizations to obtain temporary licenses outside the downtown block, but council members decided the nearly 50-year-old ordinance needed updating.

Among the updates under consideration is also a requirement that bars close their doors at 1:30 a.m. The original ordinance stipulated that liquor sales and consumption stop at 1 a.m.

Martin says that section will remain, but bars would now have a thirty-minute grace period that would allow patrons to get home safely before a requirement to close for the night. The amendment needs two readings before it becomes law.